Simulation of the merging events in Abell 2744

This animation shows how the remarkable merger event that created the galaxy cluster Abell 2944, nicknamed Pandora’s Cluster, may have happened. The red regions are clouds of very hot gas, detected by their X-ray emission. The blue clouds are regions rich in dark matter that can only be discovered indirectly by their gravitational influence. This animation shows how the different components behaved over a period of several million years, leading up to their currently observed positions.